Wilbur Quotes

1. "Too many things on my mind, said Wilbur.Well, said the goose, that's not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I've too many things under my behind."
Author: E.B. White

2. "Wilbur didn't want food, he wanted love."
Author: E.B. White

3. "And then, just as Wilbur was settling down for his morning nap, he heard again the thin voice that had addressed him the night before."Salutations!" said the voice.Wilbur jumped to his feet. "Salu-what?" he cried."Salutations!" repeated the voice."What are they, and where are you?" screamed Wilbur. "Please, please, tell me where you are. And what are salutations?""Salutations are greetings," said the voice. "When I say 'salutations,' it's just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning."
Author: E.B. White

4. "The night seemed long. Wilbur's stomach was empty and his mind was full. And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's always hard to sleep."
Author: E.B. White

5. "Templeton was down there now, rummaging around. When he returned to the barn, he carried in his mouth an advertisement he had torn from a crumpled magazine. How's this?" he asked, showing the ad to Charlotte.It says 'Crunchy.' 'Crunchy' would be a good word to write in your web."Just the wrong idea," replied Charlotte. "Couldn't be worse. We don't want Zuckerman to think Wilbur is crunchy. He might start thinking about crisp, crunchy bacon and tasty ham. That would put ideas into his head. We must advertise Wilbur's noble qualities, not his tastiness."
Author: E.B. White

6. "Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur—this lovely world, these precious days…"
Author: E.B. White

7. "Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print."
Author: E.B. White

8. "Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."
Author: E.B. White

9. "Grounding airplanes to cover your butt would never have let Orville or Wilbur change the world. We would still be spending weeks to cross the Atlantic to do business in London."
Author: Gordon Bethune

10. "May in Varanasi. 25° and wet. It's like the 6th circle of the inferno here, Edith - where they flail the arses off the howling heretics and the men who fuck marine life etc. NATO's stomping on the Balkans while India and Pakistan threaten one another with nukes. "Dead From the Waist Down" on MTV. The humidity's making me horny and mad. I miss Robin. In his new book, Ken Wilbur calls it "skin hunger". I feel like I'm building up a charge. Monsoon's on its way."
Author: Grant Morrison

11. "My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died."There's a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, "Who told you that?" "Annabel did.""Well, it's not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world."There's a silence while I stare at Dad and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. "Richard," she moans quietly."A tortoise?" I repeat in dismay. "I'm named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?""Longevity?"
Author: Holly Smale

12. "Nick? Any idea?"Nick coughs too. "Nope. No idea at all."Wilbur gives him a stern look. "So what was the point in doing all the Jane Austen stuff if she doesn't know about it, Poodle-bottom?"
Author: Holly Smale

13. "I came to get you. I knew you'd freak out.""But..." My head still feels like a helium balloon. "Why?"Nick looks blank. "Because you always freak out."I shake my head. My voice feels like I've swallowed it. "I mean, why do you care if I freak out?"There's a long silence."Well," Wilbur finally bursts, "I can take a shot in the dark, if you want.""Seriously," Nick snaps, making his fingers into a gun shape. "I'm going to take a shot in the dark in a minute and it will make contact."Wilbur looks charmed. "Isn't he adorable?" he says fondly. "My duty as Fairy Godmother is complete, anyhoo, and I believe it's time to spread my magic dust elsewhere. So many pumpkins after all; so little time."
Author: Holly Smale

14. "I like eggs and bacon," George tells me. "But" - his face clouds - "do you know that bacon is" - tears leap to his eyes - "Wilbur?"
Author: Huntley Fitzpatrick

15. "What will make you great today will never make you great tomorrow! The airplane that Wilbur and Orville Wright invented in 1906 would be seen as a scrap today. It becomes valueless with time."
Author: Israelmore Ayivor

16. "It is not the ship in the water but the water in the ship that sinks it. So it is not the Christian in the world but the world in the Christian that constitutes the danger. Anything that dims my vision of Christ, or takes away my taste for Bible study, or cramps my prayer life, or makes Christian work difficult, is wrong for me, and I must, as a Christian, turn away from it. ~J. Wilbur Chapman"
Author: J. Wilbur Chapman

17. "This is where the pivotal events of my childhood unfolded, while I ate banana and root beer Popsicles, two by two, tucking the sticks neatly under the skirt of the chair. It's where Sunnybank Lad met Lady, Ken met his friend Flicka, Atlanta burned, Manderley burned, Lassie came home, Jim ran away, Alice got small, Wilbur got big, David Copperfield was born, Beth died, and, on an endless gloomy winter afternoon, Jody shot his yearling."
Author: Jo Ann Beard

18. "Wilbur Larch knew that freedom was an orphan's most dangerous illusion, and when he finally heard from Homer, he scanned the oddly formal letter, which was disappointing in its lack of detail. Regarding illusions, and all the rest, there was simply no evidence.‘I am learning to swim,' wrote Homer Wells. (I know! I know! Tell me about it! Thought Wilbur Larch.) ‘I do better at driving,' Homer added."
Author: John Irving

19. "Dr. Gingrich and Mrs. Goodhall had prevailed upon the board of trustees; the board had requested that Larch comply with Dr. Gingrich's recommendation of a ‘follow-up report' on the status of each orphan's success (or failure) in each foster home. If this added paperwork was too tedious for Dr. Larch, the board recommended that Larch take Mrs. Goodhall's suggestion and accept an administrative assistant. Don't I have enough history to attend to, as is? Larch wondered. He rested in the dispensary; he sniffed a little ether and composed himself. Gingrich and Goodhall, he said to himself. Ginghall and Goodrich, he muttered. Richhall and Ginggood! Goodring and Hallrich! He woke himself, giggling.‘What are you so merry about?' Nurse Angela said sharply to him from the hall outside the dispensary.‘Goodballs and Ding Dong!' Wilbur Larch said to her."
Author: John Irving

20. "He felt like hearing Mrs. Grogan's prayer again, and so he went to the girls' division a little early for his usual delivery of Jane Eyre. He eavesdropped in the hall on Mrs. Grogan's prayer; I must ask her if she'd mind saying it to the boys, he thought, then wondered if it would confuse the boys coming so quickly on the heels of, or just before, the Princes of Maine, Kings of New England benediction. I get confused myself sometimes, Dr. Larch knew.‘Grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest,' Mrs. Grogan was saying, ‘and peace at the last.'Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the saint of St. Cloud's, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he'd come a long way and still had a long way to go."
Author: John Irving

21. "Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare."
Author: John Irving

22. "The situation Larch was thinking of was war, the so-called war in Europe; Larch, and many others, feared that the war wouldn't stay there. (‘I'm sorry, Homer,' Larch imagined having to tell the boy. ‘I don't want you to worry, but you have a bad heart; it just wouldn't stand up to a war.') What Larch meant was that his own heart would never stand up to Homer Wells's going to war.The love of Wilbur Larch for Homer Wells extended even to his tampering with history, a field wherein he was an admitted amateur, but it was nonetheless a field that he respected and also loved. (In an earlier entry in the file on Homer Wells – an entry that Dr. Larch removed, for it lent an incorrect tone of voice, or at least a tone of voice unusual for history – Dr. Larch had written: ‘I love nothing or no one as much as I love Homer Wells. Period."
Author: John Irving

23. "When Homer Wells saw the stationmaster's brain stem exposed, he felt that Dr. Larch was busy enough – with both hands – for it to be safe to say what Homer wanted to say.‘I love you,' said Homer Wells. He knew he had to leave the room, then – while he could still see the door – and so he started to leave.‘I love you too, Homer,' said Wilbur Larch, who for another minute or more could not have seen a blood clot in the brain stem if there had been one to see. He heard Homer say ‘Right' before he heard the door close.In a while, he could make out the brain stem clearly, there was no clot.‘Arrhythmia,' Wilbur Larch repeated to himself. Then he added, ‘Right,' as if he were now speaking for Homer Wells. Dr. Larch put his instruments aside; he gripped the operating table for a long time."
Author: John Irving

24. "You are my work of art," Wilbur Larch told Homer Wells. "Everything else has just been a job. I don't know if you've got a work of art in you," Larch concluded in his letter to Homer, "but I know what your job is,and you know what it is, too."
Author: John Irving

25. "Wallace Worthington would have reminded Wilbur Larch of someone he might have met at the Channing-Peabodys', where Dr. Larch went to perform his second abortion – the rich people's abortion, as Larch thought of it. Wallace Worthington would strike Homer Wells as what a real King of New England should look like."
Author: John Irving

26. "He won all those medals in the Second World War, which was staged by robots so that Dwayne Hoover could give a free-will reaction to such a holocaust. The war was such an extravaganza that there was scarcely a robots anywhere who didn't have a part to play. Harold Newcomb Wilbur got his medals for killing Japanese, who were yellow robots. They were fueled by rice."
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

27. "{McCabe on the influential scientist Luther Burbank}His magnificent work, which added an incalculable sum to the wealth of America and left him a comparatively poor man, is well known. His own simple account of his discoveries runs to 12 volumes and is incomplete. I was one of the few men whom he admitted to his house in Santa Rosa in the few months before he died and I found him advanced even beyond the vague Emersonian theism of his earlier years. He agreed to see me, he said, though he was tired and ill, because of his admiration of my work as a rationalist. He had just raised a storm by a public declaration that he did not believe in a future life, and his biographer Wilbur Hale repeats this."
Author: Luther Burbank

28. "When the machine had been fastened with a wire to the track, so that it could not start until released by the operator, and the motor had been run to make sure that it was in condition, we tossed a coin to decide who should have the first trial. Wilbur won."
Author: Orville Wright

29. "Wilbur, I want to have like a million of your babies."He looked happier than I had ever seen him."Really? Should we start now?""Definitely."
Author: Renée Carlino

30. "If the Wright Brothers were alive today, Orville would have to lay off Wilbur."
Author: Robert Crandall

31. "Traveling Wilburys was always played in my house growing up."
Author: Sara Rue

Wilbur Quotes Pictures